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Started as elves of the south, but because they have terrible units I decided to make all the men and merchants I could and pull back into the orange and red (i.e. - good) cities on the coast. It's mostly working, but they're pressing me hard on the north.

Wow I really wasn't looking around the map but you guys have it tough. I guess it is really up to us at the northwest to get things under control. I just need to get rid of this 155 stack of zombie men roaming my outer city ~.~

Our scouts tell us there are at least 176 zombie hordes with a combined military strength of over 7322 wandering the land. 60 Locations have been afflicted with the Blight.

The zombie military strength jumped from ~5k to ~ 7k in 12 hrs. That is really scary.

And I'm about to do this, to help out brown in our impossible game. He's lost his troll starting city, so I'm going to give his troll army a boost so it has a chance to retake it.

B-but... I'M a brown that lost his troll starting city!

I got my shit locked down, though. My trolls are up to 96 strength, which means that they can demolish anything and everything within 6 hours walking distance with their Stomp and then clean up the remnants. Even those 300 strong zombent thickets are going to crumble once my trolls make their way south.

Update on our impossible game: Through subterfuge, the zombies managed to force the blight into the northern Ent stronghold, leaving the elves of the north in a battle for their lives. Meanwhile, the southern dwarves and eastern goblins are each hard pressed and are in danger of being completely overrun. The southern elves have fled to the coast, where they have enlisted the aid of orcs to attempt to push back the blight, and the western goblins are struggling to hold the line against undead trolls.

258 zombies in 75 locations when this image was taken.
At the start of the day (14h ago): Our scouts tell us there are at least 225 zombie hordes with a combined military strength of over 8870 wandering the land. 68 Locations have been afflicted with the Blight.

Update on our impossible game: Through subterfuge, the zombies managed to force the blight into the northern Ent stronghold, leaving the elves of the north in a battle for their lives. Meanwhile, the southern dwarves and eastern goblins are each hard pressed and are in danger of being completely overrun. The southern elves have fled to the coast, where they have enlisted the aid of orcs to attempt to push back the blight, and the western goblins are struggling to hold the line against undead trolls.

258 zombies in 75 locations when this image was taken.
At the start of the day (14h ago): Our scouts tell us there are at least 225 zombie hordes with a combined military strength of over 8870 wandering the land. 68 Locations have been afflicted with the Blight.

The Elves of the South would henceforth like to be referred to as the Orcs of the South(east). Finally stabilized, thanks to having merchants installed in some red/orange cities. Starting to push back, and the zombies in the south aren't doin' much (zombie gnomes and zombie merchants, oh no!). Still got a ton of huge zombie cyclops armies further in. I don't know how the dwarves have survived.

Update on our impossible game: Through subterfuge, the zombies managed to force the blight into the northern Ent stronghold, leaving the elves of the north in a battle for their lives. Meanwhile, the southern dwarves and eastern goblins are each hard pressed and are in danger of being completely overrun. The southern elves have fled to the coast, where they have enlisted the aid of orcs to attempt to push back the blight, and the western goblins are struggling to hold the line against undead trolls.

258 zombies in 75 locations when this image was taken.
At the start of the day (14h ago): Our scouts tell us there are at least 225 zombie hordes with a combined military strength of over 8870 wandering the land. 68 Locations have been afflicted with the Blight.

I like how it looks as though everyone has fled for the coasts, leaving the dwarves all alone in the middle of the map looking around and going "uh... guys?"

AEF on January 2011

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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular

Update on our impossible game: Through subterfuge, the zombies managed to force the blight into the northern Ent stronghold, leaving the elves of the north in a battle for their lives. Meanwhile, the southern dwarves and eastern goblins are each hard pressed and are in danger of being completely overrun. The southern elves have fled to the coast, where they have enlisted the aid of orcs to attempt to push back the blight, and the western goblins are struggling to hold the line against undead trolls.

258 zombies in 75 locations when this image was taken.
At the start of the day (14h ago): Our scouts tell us there are at least 225 zombie hordes with a combined military strength of over 8870 wandering the land. 68 Locations have been afflicted with the Blight.

I like how it looks as though everyone has fled for the coasts, leaving the dwarves all alone in the middle of the map looking around and going "uh... guys?"

Dwarves smell bad.

Ramian: Would 5 yellow help at all? I have that from spoils of war. I don't see any way to save your capital, but if you make another army there and then flee south with everything, you'll probably survive for quite a bit longer. 3 dwarf armies in a level 4 city should survive anything but like a str 300 army, and I've only ever seen that once or twice.

Yeah, and as to the 'zombie subterfuge', a similar thing happened to me last night. I had 2 armies in a city, one weak and one strong, and a zombie army with strength between those 2 heading to the city, one hour away. I decided to send the strong army out in that direction because I wanted him headed there anyway, and I figured he would destroy the zombies on the way. The hour clicks over and, in some order:

My strong army moved out of the city.
The zombies attacked the city, killing the army there and generating a new zombie army from the town.
My strong army destroyed the original zombie army.

So I was left with my army an hour outside of a freshly zombified town (with a new zombie army in it), but having destroyed the zombie army that took the town. I think maybe that the game resolves all the moves first, then resolves combat depending where armies end up and whether they passed other armies getting there, but it doesn't necessarily resolve combat resulting from passing other armies first, as it probably should. I don't know if any of that explains your ent situation, though.

I guess, being the luckier players in the impossible game, I'd shed some light on what I'm up to and could use some advice about what I should do.

To the south: Archgate, my wizard stronghold, just got captured by a 100+ str army and is now spawning zombie wizards despite raining magical storms on them. It is now occupied by a 52 str army. I'm thinking of casting more storms and getting my 25 str dwarf army to retake the city. Hopefully they won't move north to Market Town because that would be very bad news indeed.

In the middle: Salty Fort is going to be under attack by a 55 str zombie force and it probably wouldn't survive the assault. Couple of options: 1) Raise a dwarf army and get more fortifications, 2) use the ogre army to stop the zombie army to buy time, 3) Reinforce the existing men army. 1 & 2 are more favorable because I need all the men I can get for Battlekeep.

I am moving my Ogre army into Smallville in an attempt to capture it while the larger army is away. With reinforcements, this should be a success unless the zombies grow above 30 str.

Slightly south of that, I have a pretty nice 33 str men army at Battlekeep and it is probably the center of my strategy. If I manage to keep it alive, at least against the advancing 80 str army, it should be able to attract and destroy most other forces in that region.

To the north: My landgrab efforts are complete and the neutral cities there are all occupied. However, with the loss of Sleeping Tree, my northern front has been exposed. Moreover, I have been unable to utilize my orange cities (noooo immortal key) but have been sending reinforcements to orange (about 30 str to his hobgoblin army). I could possibly give all those cities to green, since he is really in a bind and is integral to my survival as well

Also, I have about 10+ green, orange, red and purple coins to donate/exchange.

My 2 cents is to get men and merchants into those yellow (and orange) cities and start spamming cyclops's (and hobgoblins, if you can get a key).

I would try to hold the line from Silver Basin to Snarling Den until your cyclops factory comes on line. Battlekeep, Queenslock and Market Town are luxuries, keep them as long as you can but don't sell out for them. Use the Cyclops you already have to freeze the army heading towards salty fort, and buy a new dwarf army there. Move the man and merchant from farmville to the cyclops town ASAP.

I'll send you all of my yellow (5 whole coins!). If you want to send back red or orange, that would be great.

It also would be worthwhile for you to train another Enchantress, and keep her safe. Force the enemy to leave blighted areas before they build up too much, and let them break on your walls. (Wizards aren't very strong if you force them into direct combat.)

My understanding of the battle system is that the strongest attacking army at a location will attack the strongest defender; once that battle is resolved, the strongest surviving attacker attacks the strongest surviving defender, then so on and so forth down the line. I've seen evidence that sometimes a weaker defending unit gets attacked first, but to the best of my knowledge that is a bug.

Lots of changes on the way, but not to be implemented in the current games:

13th January 2011
I thought I would take some time today to chime in with a few things I don't like about the game. Large changes I'm thinking about here, but haven't implemented yet. I'd love to hear what you think about these things too: info@ironhelmet.com

1. Large "Fans" of Zombies.
I don't like that toward the end of the game you see large groups of different zombies sitting on a blighted location. It make it hard to see what the threats are and you tend to just write it off as a mess of zombies. I would like these large groups to coalesce into a single scary zombie army.

2. Acting First or Last
Turn based games are supposed to level the playing field and remove the advantages of logging in more often or setting an alarm clock and getting up in the middle of the night. It's not working well at the moment because there are too many areas in the game where there are advantages to acting first in a turn, or waiting to the last moment so as not to reveal your hand. Example: If you cast Befuddle in the start of a new turn your opponent wont be able to use their powers.

To fix this we are going to add a "casting time" to many of the games powers, and delay casting the spell, or revealing to the other players that you intend to cast that spell.

Where you move your armies and what you build or reinforce will also need to be hidden until the start of the next turn.

3. Power Range, Duration and Scale
As I suggested in my last post, I don't like powers with a range or duration of 6 hours because it forces players to login within 6 hours reaching a target. I'd like to make a general rule for all powers that no range or duration is less that 12 hours.

Similarly, I'd like to have a standard ways of scaling unit powers when they are reinforced. Generally speaking, I'm going to avoid reducing the time of anything in the game as this forces players to login more often.

+ Damage spells will continue to scale up with reinforcements.
+ State changing spells will scale duration 12 hours for every level of reinforcements.
+ Damage over time spells user one of these two methods.
+ Powers that instantly change the state of another object like Dispel Magic, Holy Light or Kings Loyalty won't scale. Instead we will look for new Inactive Abilities for these units that do scale. Perhaps Enchantresses can heal armies they are next to? Perhaps Nymphs could demand more coins from the local population at tax time.

Moving forward, I think these changes will have too big an impact for me to be able to roll them out to existing games. The dificulty will go completly out of wack as I start messing with zombie spawning and merging, and the powers will change significanlty. I'll have to split off a new version.

Number 1, combined with effects that can deal % based damage (particularly ones that can get over 100%), means an easier endgame for the players. Cutting down on the fan of zombies effect would slow the leveling rate for armies, making it harder for a single army to cut through hordes of zombies without taking casualties.

So I figured out what happened to oakfort, I think the game might have bugged and not displayed the little goblin army because I remember the road being clear so I sent my dwarves south to help reinforce those towns and then they died to the 6 strong goblin horde. Also have wiped out armies always risen again as zombies? Maybe I just never noticed it before due to not losing any in previous games really.

Also UrQuan if you want to give me those orange cities I really could use the coins to start raising a troll army, only way I can see to take back oakfort really. Alternatively you could just supply me with orange coins and after I get my own troll army up to over 100+ strength I could gift you one and start reinforcing it. That is assuming we both survive long enough of course.

We've won all of our games, so far. No idea whether that statement was true even when it was first written, but the zombies got nerfed a bit since then and our groups have consistently worked well together.

We've won all of our games, so far. No idea whether that statement was true even when it was first written, but the zombies got nerfed a bit since then and our groups have consistently worked well together.

Ok, it seems like I'm stabilizing. I thought we might want to discuss overall strategy.

Retaken Archgate, going to fortify it and hope the 100+ str hordes don't come back in that direction.

My cyclops are just waiting on reinforcements to get the next town.

My army of men held up at Battlekeep and are level 9. Should be able to hold off most other attacks.

Most importantly:
I have leftover yellow and purple coins and 3 cities that can make dwarves I don't think I'd need this turn. Oddly enough, I'm still running out of blue coins despite all my traders. Who needs help?

In the Impossible Dream:
The goblins of the east have been reduced to a single stronghold, beset by undead stalkers. The dwarves also have retreated to a mountain castle, hoping to survive the relentless onslaught. The northern elves have been pushed from their ancestral homes, and are seeking aid from the dwarves of the north and scattered goblin tribes. Meanwhile, the south-eastern orcs work to push back against the undead menace, hoping to free the elves to once more frolic in their southern forests. The men of the east are hard-pressed, but aided by a the eastern fay hope to reclaim their fallen cities. In the meantime, the orcs of the south and goblins of the west are joining forces to push away from the coast, and the men of the west stand strong in their homes, guarded by stout forces of dwarves.

Start of Day 7: Our scouts tell us there are at least 286 zombie hordes with a combined military strength of over 10676 wandering the land. 88 Locations have been afflicted with the Blight.

@ UrQuan - any support you can offer to the elves (Glin) to help them recover from the loss of their forest would be well-received, I'm sure. You also should focus on getting one or more wizards strengthened enough that they can reduce large forces (200+) to manageable size.

Wow. That looks like things have gotten a little out of hand. How did that happen?

Impossible, baby.

The Southeastern Orc/Elf/Whatever Alliance's immediate plans are to clean up the southern blue cities with the southern forces and drive straight northwest with the northern armies. Taking out the cyclops and hobgoblin towns should reduce the zombie pressure all around there. I'll transfer yellow cities to the dwarves as I take them (if I take them).

Welp, I just screwed myself over, didn't notice goblins heading for my ent location until it was too late, and I accidentally moved my only noticeable army in the area to their death. That pretty much reversed all of my momentum.

Is it me, or are undead stalkers broken? At first they somehow managed to attack my centaurs twice in the span of 1 hour. Then I now see that one group of stalkers have attacked my troops 5 times at once! If that is the case, the only way I can see destroying them is to use a spell or root them forever. As it is, even though I've taken back the troll city, My economy is devastated.

Yeah, they're broken. I've sent the bug report to Jay before, and sent it again this morning. They stay hidden all the time and are impossible to kill outside of 100% direct damage (10 Shaman, 100 elves, or 100 trolls) or an equal sized group of wizards. I haven't managed to get a nymph close enough to one yet to see if I can pop them out of it, but they are absolutely devastating. They're a large part of the reason why Darkewolfe (goblins of the east) has been completely knocked out of the game.

Also, there's a group of 24 wizards wandering around that took a big chunk out of my main fay army; keep an eye out for them and stay out of range, if you can.

Also dice gain now works on an experience points system, rather than just +1 dice for every battle won.

Although zombies now work differently, so maybe it all balances out.

A lot of changes.

Note that Shamans do a flat 10 damage, plus dice (ie their strength does nothing) - but all spellcasters get xp from kills now. That's huge for Shamans.

Wizards do a flat 24% over 24 hours, regardless of unit size or experience - which is nice, but they cost 25 per unit and the spell costs a massive 5 coins to cast, with 48 hour recharge. So... ouch. On the other hand, you end up with 2-strength squads with piles of experience, so I do use them to defend towns - kinda Gandalf-with-a-sword style.

Dwarves are still a little underpowered. 2-cost Hammer, but it doesn't insta-build any more. So it's nice and all, but along with their greater cost, the change to defence (only the strongest unit gets the defensive bonus) and their nerf (they only get +10 now, not double), the larger unit size doesn't come close to compensating.

The zombies are murder now. I'm not sure even a Very Hard is winnable, and Impossible is impossible. The biggest impact is the merging units - they don't wander arround in fans of little units, they clump up. With the way the battle system works, this has made zombies way stronger. You can beat 100 units of strength 10 without breaking a sweat, but a single strength 200 unit (and I'm seeing them a lot) is almost unstoppable.

Don't know that I like that they don't decay over time, now, either. I liked the change to begin with, but there's no alternate way to stop the zombies (ie in the previous version, you could beat a massive zombie unit by delaying tactics - root, care-bear-stare, holy light to keep them out of towns, even just falling back until the decay a bit. Now we're stuck with brute force every time.

Want to see something scary? This is on Hard:

And yeah, there were some fairly suicidal settings (always-at-war meant we couldn't trade to begin with, or even see our own money on the first turn, and no-independants meant there was nothing to bribe, or slow the zombies).... But still. Hard setting.